A family was removed from an United Airlines flight in February after complaining about an inflight movie for violence, according The Atlantic.
The unidentified family was traveling from Denver to Baltimore on Feb. 2, 2013 with their two boys, ages 4 and 8, when the PG-13 movie “Alex Cross” came on the drop-down screens throughout the plane. The family was surprised by the violence and sexual content that appeared in the opening scenes.
“On our plane, an A320, the movie was projected on drop-down screens above the seats, such that we could not shield our young children from this inappropriate content,” the family explained in the complaint posted on The Atlantic.
They talked to two different flight attendants to find out if the screen in front of them could be turned off or retracted. They were told that it couldn’t, and that they didn’t have the authority to do anything about it. The family claims that the screen could be “folded up independently,” and the passengers sitting behind them voiced support for the family.
The family asked if the pilot had the authority to turn off the movie or retract the screen. They were told that they could talk to the pilot about it when they left the plane.
An announcement was made more than an hour later by the pilot stating that the plane would be landing at Chicago O’Hare for security reasons.
When they landed, the family was surprised when the Chicago police came on board and asked them to leave the plane.
The investigation involved “several of Chicago’s finest, two Border Protection officers and several United and ORD managers, and an FBI agent, who all met us at the gate,” the family explained. “After we were interviewed [for less than 5 minutes], our identities and backgrounds checked, we were booked on the next flight to [Baltimore], and had to linger in the terminal for hours with our exhausted and terrified little boys.”
United sent the following statement to the USA Today verifying the incident:
“United flight 638 from Denver to Baltimore diverted to Chicago O'Hare after the crew reported a disturbance involving a passenger. The flight landed without incident and the passengers were removed from the aircraft. We re-accommodated the customers on the next flight to Baltimore and have since conducted a full review of our inflight entertainment.”
The family claims that they were nothing but polite the whole time, and did everything they could to distract their children.
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